Friday, July 29, 2005

IT WOULDN'T BE OUT OF THE QUESTION FOR THEM TO PICK ON SOMEONE WHO MAY NOT BE MIDDLE EASTERN BUT WHO MAY LOOK MIDDLE EASTERN. SAY, SOMEONE WHO IS FROM SOUTH AMERICA, SOMEONE WHO IS FROM CENTRAL AMERICA, AND, SAY, YOU KNOW, WE KNOW THEY'RE RACIAL PROFILING US, SO WE'RE GOING TO TRY TO GET SOME PUBLIC OPINION ON OUR SIDE. LET'S DRESS THIS GUY UP, TELL HIM TO ACT SUSPICIOUS, AND IF THE POLICE APPROACH HIM, TELL HIM TO RUN AWAY, AND WHEN THE POLICE CATCH HIM, THEN HE APPEARS TO BE INNOCENT, SO, YOU KNOW, IN ESSENCE, THEY START SENDING OUT DECOYS. THEY CAN DO ALL KIND OF THINGS WHEN THEY KNOW THAT YOUR NET -- THAT YOU HAVE CAST A NET THAT'S THAT NARROW.

I don't know if I can quite get my head around that... wow. (For more on the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes, see my earlier post and cartoon). I guess that guest missed the whole revelation that Menezes was wearing a light jean jacket and didn't jump a turnstile... he also appears to have misplaced his own brain... wow.

Update: My grandmother (who, like me, listens/wathes conservative media to hear what the crazies are saying) tells me she heard the same ridiculous suggestion on the Michael Savage radio show. These people have no shame...

Now, of course gender identity and sexuality (i.e. being lesbian, gay, bisexual, straight, etc.) are two totally different things, but I was still surprised to see this piece in the Guardian, "A fatwa for freedom." The article tells the story of a courageous transsexual woman who (after enduring beatings and other hardships) went before the Ayatollah Khomeini 22 years ago and convinced him to issue a fatwa in suport of transsexuals and gender-reassignment surgery. (It's unclear from the piece whether the acceptance extends to trans people who do not have surgery or to trans people who are not transsexual, but my guess from reading is, probably not).

The article language's language is a bit weird, using classic phrases like "women trapped in men's bodies", etc. But the writer uses proper pronouns, and it's still an interesting read, here's the top of the piece:

It could take something extraordinary to move the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to issue a fatwa. The novelist Salman Rushdie did it by challenging the sanctity of the Prophet Mohammed in the Satanic Verses, provoking Iran's austere revolutionary leader into pronouncing the death sentence. For Maryam Khatoon Molkara it required the equally dramatic step of confronting Khomeini in person and proving, in graphic terms, that she was a woman trapped inside a man's body.

To do so, she had to endure a ferocious beating from bodyguards before coming face-to-face with the Ayatollah in his living room, covered in blood, dressed in a man's suit and, thanks to a course of hormone treatment, sporting fully-formed female breasts.

"It was behesht [paradise]," Molkara, 55, says of the meeting 22 years ago. "The atmosphere, the moment and the person were paradise for me. I had the feeling that from then on there would be a sort of light." Light or not, the encounter produced, in turn, a religious judgment which - unlike the unfulfilled edict on Rushdie - has had an enduring effect that still resonates. Because today, the Islamic Republic of Iran occupies the unlikely role of global leader for sex changes

In contrast to almost everywhere else in the Muslim world, sex change operations are legal in Iran for anyone who can afford the minimum £2,000 cost and satisfy interviewers that they meet necessary psychological criteria. As a result, women who endured agonising childhood and adolescent experiences as boys, and - albeit in fewer numbers - young men who reached sexual maturity as girls, are easy to find in Tehran. Iran has even become a magnet for patients from eastern European and Arab countries seeking to change their genders.

Thursday, July 28, 2005

Speaking at a press conference after a meeting with the Metropolitan police, Vivien Figueiredo, 22, said that the first reports of how her 27-year-old cousin had come to be killed in mistake for a suicide bomber on Friday at Stockwell tube station were wrong.

"He used a travel card," she said. "He had no bulky jacket, he was wearing a jeans jacket. But even if he was wearing a bulky jacket that wouldn't be an excuse to kill him."

Now, of course the thickness of the jacket SHOULDN'T matter, and if he was being pursued by armed plainclothesmen, I can see why he'd jump the turnstile (even though it appears he didn't). But it's been used as the main justification for Menezes's murder by the chorus of commentators chanting "the police did the right thing!" Do they still stand by their arguments, I wonder?

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

By now the fatal police shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes in the wake of the London bombings is already beginning to fade from the news. See the Wikipedia for a good collection of details and articles about the case.

Basically, Mr. Menezes was a 27-year-old electrician from Brazil, a legal immigrant who had the misfortune to be living in the same block of flats as suspected bombers. When he left for work on the morning of July 22, he was followed by a large group of police who were suspicious of his warm clothing (and of course, his brown skin). They let him get on a bus, but when he got to the Stockwell subway station, they began chasing him with guns (remember, they were in plainclothes).

A terrified Mr. Menezes (who by some accounts had been assaulted by a gang a few weeks before) ran into the station and tried to get on a train, but several police pushed him to the floor of the subway car and another shot him seven times in the head and once in the shoulder, as horrified passengers looked on. Politicians and police officials have expressed cursory regrets, but say the "shoot to kill" policy will continue.

Now, it's bad enough that he was murdered for the crime of being brown and wearing a fleece jacket (the police say his jacket was suspicious because it was a warm day, but it was only 62 degrees out and he was from Brazil). Nothing will bring him back to his family and friends. But a large part of the public/official reaction to his death and the "shoot in the head to kill" policy has been "well, it was his fault" or "anything done to protect the public from terrorists is justifiable" (never mind that Mr. Menezes WAS a member of the innocent public). This sort of reaction breaks down into several sick arguments (see the BBC for a good sampling):

It was his fault for running from police (who were dressed in plain clothes and may not even have identified themselves, depending on conflicting reports). Anyone who runs from police is obviously guilty and deserves to be shot.

Our sympathy needs to be with those courageous police, it's so hard to be a police officer that anything they do is justifiable. (i.e. I'm not brown so I'm not scared of the police).

Law-abiding people have nothing to fear from the police. (Hey, I'm not Muslim, as long as I'm not shot who cares?)

If they HADN'T shot him and he had turned out to be a suicide bomber, it would have been much worse. (So anyone can then be shot, "just in case!"?)

It was the TERRORISTS who killed Menezes, by forcing the police to do what they did. (Right, just like the TERRORISTS bombed Baghdad, right? Terrorism absolves us of all responsibility for our actions!) In other words, some innocent people have to die to protect other, more important (and perhaps more "photogenic") innocent people!

One of the most poignant comments I saw on the BBC site was the following:

Surely the most frightening thing is how quickly we have come to share the terrorists' evident belief that innocent people must die.
Robin Saltonstall, Beverley, UK

That pretty much sums it up. Anyway, I haven't seen a whole lot of bloggers commenting on this, but IndyMedia UK has a collection of great imaginary media talking points about the shooting (it's worth noting here that the policy is being referred to in the media as "shoot to kill to protect", as if anyone was "protected" by the murder of an innocent man). There's some pieces on the Huffington Post by
Hooman Majd and Richard Bradley. The blog Sporula has a good piece called "The London Shooting and the Myth of Race". And Earl Ofari Hutchinson has an excellent piece on what this says about racial profiling in Britain in general. And there was a post in a Daily Kos diary Monday with some discussion.

Update: Shoot to Kill Cartoon Mini-Roundup

I haven't been able to find many other cartoons about this. Scottish cartoonist Brian Adcock cautions police to "mind the gap" in their thinking. Tim Jackson notes that these kind of police brutality incidents are all-too-familiar to Americans. And I'm not sure what exactly the Guardian's Steve Bell means by this one. If any of you readers see any other cartoons about Menezes or the shoot-to-kill policy, please let me know in the comments...

Update 2: Awful pro-shooting piece in the NY Times

Today's (7/28) NY Times has a guest op-ed defending the killing of Mr. Menezes, "When You Have to Shoot First," similar to a recent NY Post editorial. The writer makes the same tired "the police had no choice because he was wearing a long warm coat on a hot summer day" argument (as if poor choice of dress justifies murder when they had no other evidence), and actually compares Mr. Menezes to a group of men who shot at a friend of his (nevermind that Mr. Menezes was unarmed).

Update 3: Police admit Menezes was NOT wearing a bulky jacket and did not jump turnstile as previously claimed

Speaking at a press conference after a meeting with the Metropolitan police, Vivien Figueiredo, 22, said that the first reports of how her 27-year-old cousin had come to be killed in mistake for a suicide bomber on Friday at Stockwell tube station were wrong.

"He used a travel card," she said. "He had no bulky jacket, he was wearing a jeans jacket. But even if he was wearing a bulky jacket that wouldn't be an excuse to kill him."

Adorable, huh? Apparently the Massachusetts' governor's special stable of "scientists" have told him contraception and abortion are the same thing. See feministing (which has an EC roundup) and Ms. Musings (which analyzes the political aspects) for more.

An interview with me has just been posted over at Left Hook, a radical youth journal. Questions are both about the political aspects of cartooning (as well as the technical aspects, if you ever actually cared to know what kind of pens I use!)

Also, I may have mentioned this before, but I'll say it again--fellow InTheseTimes.com cartoonist (and famed Village Voice cartoonist) has a great new full-color book out, Sutton Impact. And you can read an interview with him here.

Friday, July 22, 2005

(Click to enlarge above image). You might have noticed that I'm not particularly fond of so-called "ex-gays." So I started thinking--if the ex-gays' hateful bullshit claim that homosexuality is a horrible illness that can be "treated" by "reparative", or "conversion" therapy is going to be taught in our public schools, what's next?

For more, the Washington Blade has a great editorial explaining why these groups are so dangerous (see also my previous post). And for continuous coverage, check out the frequently updated blog Ex-Gay Watch.

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

No one is counting

Alternet has an excellent and very detailed piece about Iraqi civilian casualties, "Unnamed, Unnoticed", going into detail about depleted uranium, the U.S. refusal to count dead or report the number of victims' families compensated for deaths, etc. Here's a brief excerpt, but you should try and read the whole thing:

How many Iraqis have died in our war in their country? Is there a better symbol of how the war for Iraq has already been lost than our ignorance about the cost of the war to Iraqis?

"Cost of the war": a cliché to normalize the carnage, like the anaesthetizing term "collateral damage" and that new semantic horror, "torture lite." And yet the "cost of the war" report, by now a hackneyed convention of American journalism, includes only American casualties -- no Iraqis -- itself a violation of the American mainstream media's own professed commitment to "objectivity." Three years of "anniversary" articles in the American media adding up the so-called "cost of the war" in Iraq have focused exclusively on Americans killed, American dollars spent, American hardware destroyed, with barely a mention of the Iraqi dead as part of that "cost."

The dead are counted. But they are Americans. The names are named. But they are Americans. The names and numbers of the dead are intoned aloud or their photographs papered on media "walls" and they are always only American.

Publishing or pronouncing the names of the American dead everyday without ever mentioning the names of the Iraqi dead offers a powerful message that only American dying matters.

Monday, July 18, 2005

Hate in ActionPlus, Tom Tomorrow's Karl Rove talking points guide

If you don't have access to Salon, you can get a free one-day pass by watching a short ad. Anyway, Salon just began a four-part series on so-called "reparative therapy", a "method" of trying to force gay, lesbian and bisexual people straight through homophobic conservative Christian cult-like brainwashing. But the anti-gay groups have gone further, sucessfully suing school districts for not including their "point of view" that homosexuality is evil and immoral and "treatable" in public school sex ed programs (see my cartoon "Obscene Literature"). This is like insisting school programs on racial and ethnic diversity lack balance because they don't include the views of white supremacists.

Also, my editor at Bay Windows, Susan Ryan-Vollmar, did an interview with an ex-ex gay Love In Action grad a few weeks ago. (She also wrote an editorial the week before.)

Sunday, July 17, 2005

Unless you read my links post last week, you've probably never heard of Masheka Wood--but that's only because he began his new weekly strip, "Thang", two weeks ago. The above is a panel from his first strip, click to see the whole thing.

Like me, Masheka hails from Massachusetts (but makes his home in Brooklyn), has an awesome (but oft-mispelled) name, and is not overly fond of Dick Cheney. His comics--sometimes political, generally not--are damned beautiful, warped and diseased, and his lettering skills make me want to cry with jealousy. Go to his new web site and send him drooling fan mail so he doesn't stop drawing, and with any luck, he'll pick up some newspapers and get referred to as "the OTHER other black cartoonist." Oh Masheka, why can't I draw as obsessive-compulsively as you?

Here's his second cartoon, but you should go read it on his web site, ok? And if you want to drool over him in person, he'll be sharing a table with me and selling stuff at the Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Maryland this year, so mark your calendars for Friday Sept. 23 and Saturday Sept. 24th!

A law enacted in 1994 bars torture by U.S. military personnel anywhere in the world. But the Pentagon working group's 2003 report, prepared under the supervision of general counsel William J. Haynes II, said that "in order to respect the President's inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign . . . [the prohibition against torture] must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to his Commander-in-Chief authority."

I don't even know what to say about that logic. Torture is torture, whether or not you consider yourself "the good guy." So it's super-ironic that one of the justifications Bush gives for the war is that Saddam used to torture people. You can't just say "well, torture is wrong, so wrong that I had to bomb this country... EXCEPT WHEN..." Torture is torture.

Interrogators at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, forced a stubborn detainee to wear women's underwear on his head, confronted him with snarling military working dogs and attached a leash to his chains, according to a newly released military investigation that shows the tactics were employed there months before military police used them on detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

The techniques, approved by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld for use in interrogating Mohamed Qahtani -- the alleged "20th hijacker" in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks -- were used at Guantanamo Bay in late 2002 as part of a special interrogation plan aimed at breaking down the silent detainee.

Military investigators who briefed the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday on the three-month probe, called the tactics "creative" and "aggressive" but said they did not cross the line into torture.

The report's findings are the strongest indication yet that the abusive practices seen in photographs at Abu Ghraib were not the invention of a small group of thrill-seeking military police officers. The report shows that they were used on Qahtani several months before the United States invaded Iraq.

The investigation also supports the idea that soldiers believed that placing hoods on detainees, forcing them to appear nude in front of women and sexually humiliating them were approved interrogation techniques for use on detainees.

So much for the bad apple defense, huh? I love the use of the word "creative" here... My parents always encouraged me to be creative when I was growing up, but that involved construction paper and crayons, not, I don't know, TORTURE. Rumsfeld needs to resign, like, NOW.

(And Rove needs to resign too, while we're at it--but of course, he was just a BRAVE WHISTLEBLOWER defending the Bush administration from Joseph Wilson's unfounded assertion there were no WMDs, right? Right?!)

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Click for full-size image. And please do not be concerned, this cartoon is not a self-portrait or a reflection of my own state of mind (except in so far as when I was a child I swore I would never go to California after seeing earthquake footage on television... And I used to carry a briefcase around in the second grade just in case the school burned down so I wouldn't lose my favorite books. But I digress...)

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Music to Draw Depressing Cartoons To

I don't know if any of my readers share my taste in books or music or
movies or care to know what I've been reading/ listening to/ watching. Regardless, here are some songs I keep replaying on my iPod lately:

Liz Phair, "Supernova" (used to hate it, it grew on me)

Johnny Cash, "25 Minutes to Go" (from the point of view of a man being executed)

What a SUPERBLY done cartoon!!! I love it and its sentiment. It is absolutely one of the most clever I have ever seen and/or read. I will pay attention to your site in the future. Thanks for the jokes.

So I'd like to ask--any of you fans out there read my work in the Boston Phoenix (letters@phx.com) or Bay Windows (letters@baywindows.com), the Rochester Insider (contacts here), the Minnesota Women's Press (editor@womenspress.com), Ms. (letterstotheeditor
@msmagazine.com), or In These Times online (link here), especially the Phoenix? If any of my recent work that you saw in there _really_ floated your boat or made you laugh or cry, instead of just telling me, why not drop them a note to say so? Trust me, it really matters, especially for an obscure cartoonist like me with so few clients. (But please be sure it was one you actually saw in that particular publication and actually loved--no lying, please, this isn't some bogus right-wing blogger letter campaign!) And while you're at it, you can let me know, too!

Note: After some dithering, I reenabled comments. I was getting heavily spammed by annoying porn sites, but I decided discerning readers could just ignore that crap.

Friday, July 08, 2005

Until I get a links page...

For a long time, I've been beating myself up for being such a jerk as to not have a links page. So this post is my links in progress, and will be continuously updated as I slowly work my way through my list of cartoonists (and bloggers) who should be required reading. The categories are arbitrary, the lists are in no meaningful order and are far from comprehensive, and of course I'm bound to forget someone, so please don't be offended if that someone is you--these are just a FEW of my personal favorites. Cartooning is a hard, lonely and financially unrewarding road, so please visit these guys and gals, read them, worship them, buy their stuff, send them emails of praise, and of course, tell 'em I sent you.

Altie* Cartoonists You've Probably Never Heard Of

Masheka Wood. (This strip is brand new, so be patient) Mr. Wood's comics--sometimes political, mostly not--are damned beautiful, warped and diseased. Send him drooling fan mail so he doesn't stop drawing, and with any luck, he'll pick up some newspapers and get referred to as "the OTHER other black cartoonist" (see Keith Knight's cartoon on the subject). Oh Masheka, why can't I draw as obsessive-compulsively as you? Oh yeah, and don't forget to buy his first book, "What Masheka Did"!

*In case you didn't know, "altie" stands for "alternative", as in the cartoons that appear in alternative weekly papers aimed at younger, more liberal and more foul-mouthed audiences than your average mainstream daily paper. For more altie cartoonists and indepth interviews, please see Ted Rall's excellent series of Attitude books (especially Attitude 2, hint hint), and his cartoonist links.

Stephen Notley ("Bob the Angry Flower"). Everyone's favorite weirdly awesome Canadian cartoon about infuriated vegetation. It should here be noted for no apparent reason that Notley's favorite movie of all time is Ghostbusters.

Tom Tomorrow ("This Modern World") If it weren't for the amazingness of Tom Tomorrow's work, I might not even be a cartoonist. I read his stuff religiously back in high school, and my first cartoon for my college newspaper was a bizarre and failed attempt to rip off his style, featuring a cute talking lizard translating the attempts of the undergraduate council to bring ROTC to campus (I was only 18, I didn't know any better!). After drawing a few more successful and less derivative cartoons, I put aside cartooning for three years to focus on my schoolwork.

But then came 9/11, the whole world went crazylike, my liberal friends were suddenly all gung-ho to bomb the crap out of Afghanistan, and I felt like the only thing keeping me sane were the Tom Tomorrow, Ted Rall and Boondocks cartoons wallpapering my dorm room. So I nervously wrote Mr. Tomorrow a fan mail to that effect, applied for a cartooning slot at the Harvard Crimson, and cancelled plans to write a senior thesis. Mr. Tomorrow posted a link to my cartoons in his blog, I got all kinds of super-encouraging fan mail, The Boston Phoenix picked up my strip a few months later, and here I am today. Thanks, Tom!

Ted Rall. The notorious Mr. Rall is one of the smartest and funniest people on earth, and also one of the nicest and coolest, so it's a pity so many people waste so much time hating him, threatening his life, and trying to get him fired from various publications with dumbass letter-writing campaigns. In addition to producing three biting and brilliant cartoons a week, he manages to write a column, draw graphic novels, blog, travel around Central Asia, and promote and edit the work of obscure cartoonists like yours truly.

Scott Bateman. In a harsh blow to all that is good and decent in this world, Scott recently lost his syndicated political cartooning gig with King Features. So, please buy his art and merchandise--he's got New York rent to pay, yo. Also, you must put down whatever you are doing at the moment and read his Sketchbook of Secrets and Shame. But artists be warned: doing so might cause you to quietly bury your own sketchbooks in a pile of peat moss because they will never be as cool, weird and funny as Scott's.

Ruben Bolling ("Tom the Dancing Bug"). I'm rapidly running out of adjectives here. So I'll just say that if it weren't for Alison Bechdel, this would be the best comic strip in the universe.

Ward Sutton ("Sutton Impact"). Village Voice cartoonist and illustrator extraordinaire Ward Sutton's Dubya caricature is one of the most grotesque in the business, a creepy, squeaky, sniveling chimp-like man-doll. Read my conversation with Ward about his new book on the In These Times web site.

Mark Fiore. This year, Mark became the first animated cartoonist to win the prestigious RFK journalism award, so well-deserved it isn't even funny. You'd never guess from his mini-movies about "democracy spreading", torture, and execution that he is a pleasant, well-adjusted California surfer guy.

I'm sure there must be others. I'll have to think about this.

Daily Comic Strips That Are Actually Worth Reading

Aaron McGruder ("The Boondocks"). The epic saga of a 10-year-old black revolutionary who moves to an all-white suburb with his thug-wannabe little brother and cranky granddad. Dropped from many newspapers after 9/11 for having some of the most hard-hitting anti-war commentary in all of cartoon and commentarydom.

Alison Bechdel ("Dykes to Watch Out For") Alison Bechdel is my hero--my favorite cartoonist of all time, no contest. She's been chronicling the lives and loves of a large cast of characters, lesbian and otherwise, in her bi-weekly cartoon soap opera for over two decades now, and her artwork, characterization, story-telling and political commentary are without compare. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll reread all of her books so many times they fall to pieces. Oh, and she's got a graphic novel coming out soon, keep your wallets open.

Robert Kirby ("Curbside") Robert Kirby's fantastic bi-weekly strip can be read online at Lavender Magazine (scroll down to the "Cartoon" category), but unfortunately there doesn't seem to be an online archive. But you can buy his book Curbside Boys, the "whimsical story of "twenty-something" gay boys falling in love in and out of love in New York City."

Neil Babra ("Imitation of Life"). This lushly colored diary comic that sometimes delved into political and gay topics is no longer actively updated, but he seems to be in the process of archiving it...

Erika Moen. Erika Moen is a 21-year-old student of "illustrated storytelling", her drawings are way pretty, and she really likes girls.

For a much more comprehensive list of LGBT cartoons and comics (like I said, the above are just SOME personal favorites) check out the Prism Comics list of LGBT comics creators and FranÃ§ois Penaud's Gay Comics List.

Any long-time readers know the story of Gwen Araujo, the young transgendered woman who was brutally murdered by a group of men she thought were her friends back in 2002. The case is currently on trial for the second time, and reader Brenda Ann has brought my attention to a blog keeping track of all the details.